There is Another Way E-Book

• Herausgeber: Independent Thinking Press
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Edited by Ian Gilbert with chapters by Mark Anderson, Lisa Jane Ashes, Phil Beadle, Jackie Beere, David Cameron (The Real David Cameron), Paul Clarke, Tait Coles, Mark Creasy, Mark Finnis, Dave Harris, Crista Hazell, Martin Illingworth, Nina Jackson, Rachel Jones, Gill Kelly, Debra Kidd, Jonathan Lear, Trisha Lee, Roy Leighton, Matthew McFall, Sarah Pavey, Simon Pridham, Jim Roberson, Hywel Roberts, Martin Robinson, Bethan Stracy-Burbridge, Dave Whitaker, Phil Wood. We are living at a time when loud voices from inside and outside the profession are telling teachers and school leaders 'this' is the way education should be done. This is how you should lead a school. This is how you should manage a class. This is how children should learn. This is what you should do to make children behave. These messages are given as if there is only one way to achieve these things their way. However, with decades of experience working in all types of school around the globe, the many associates of Independent Thinking know there is always another way. This book is for educators everywhere who are hearing these loud voices yet who know that children deserve something better. Full of inspiration and ideas for how to achieve just that, There is Another Way is a call to action to swim against the tide and reclaim the heart of education. All of the royalties from sales of this book will go to the Big i Foundation.

Leseprobe

Praise for There is Another Way

This is an important collection of essays that explore alternative ways forward for education. The contributions are thoughtful, committed, passionate, idealistic and, ultimately, radical. They offer moral, pragmatic and practical alternative perspectives and share a deep and abiding concern for the learning and development of children as the core focus of any education system. The range of topics covered provides a powerful resource for a fundamental critique of existing policies and taken together they offer a holistic view of an alternative future. Collectively the chapters ‘speak truth to power’ and will stimulate thinking, debate and reflection about the future course of education.

John West-Burnham, Professor of Educational Leadership, St Mary’s University College

At one point in There is Another Way, Nina Jackson – discussing mental health issues – writes, ‘Reassure the person that with help and support they can get through the emotional trauma they are experiencing.’ That line could be the strapline for this book, a book which reassures those of us who have, even for a second, begun to think that what we have been doing in our teaching careers for years was wrong. I, for one, have felt huge emotional trauma when things I thought were important in a learning community – relationships, humanity and love – have been trumped by political diktat, distrust and textbooks.

There is a host of great educators writing here. The Real David Cameron stands up for experience over research. Bethan Stracy-Burbridge articulates beautifully the benefits of art therapy and how every interaction we have with a child matters. Professor Paul Clarke poses a question which gets to the nub of why we are here and how can we remain part of planet earth. Rachel Jones reminds us that there is no ‘what works’ rulebook. And if you were thinking of doing away with books in this digital age, you’d better read Sarah Pavey’s essay on why libraries are more important than ever! This is no backward-looking tome, however: Mark Anderson and Simon Pridham give us sparkling insights into how new technologies can shape learning in the future.

In his signature essay Ian Gilbert, the driving force behind There is Another Way, urges us all, especially our students, to ask the eternal question of anything and anyone – why? It is the question which we should be asking of education policymakers of all political hues. If this book does just one thing it will help those in education whose beliefs have been eroded by over-confident politicians over the last decade to reassert an educational values-system which puts humanity back into the centre of the ring. With There is Another Way none of us need to be emotionally traumatised any longer.

John Tomsett, Head Teacher, Huntington School

The years of experience the writers combine to produce this book mean that there is something for every reader. The authors bring professional wisdom, insight, knowledge and sense to address the confusion and clamour of the present climate. At the heart of the book is a shared concern for the best in schools and the greatest impact on children’s futures. The book is a joy to read, a real treasure trove of thinking and practice; there is a jewel for everyone.

Mick Waters, Professor of Education, Wolverhampton University

It is easy to find books encouraging you to change your way of teaching (without showing you any clues). It is more difficult to discover one, written by real teachers, not only saying that another way is possible, but also indicating where that way is. A pleasure to read this inspirational and practical book which moves the reader into a future that he knows he can make real: the future of an education with the children as its only concern.

Juan Carlos García García, Pedagogical, Pastoral and Innovation Department, Escuelas Católicas de Madrid

I got a huge amount out of this wide-ranging book. I think others will too. It’s full of wisdom and great insight. There is Another Way is a compilation of the thoughts of some of our top thinkers on pedagogy, politics, research, curriculum, coaching, mental health, restorative practice, behaviour and values. It starts with a terrific list of aspirations for all of us in education.

It’s well worth getting a copy. It will refresh your thinking.

Mary Myatt, adviser and inspector

I love this book. Sequels aren’t always a good idea, but the Second Big Book of Independent Thinking is a really good idea. It exudes optimism at a time when there isn’t always enough optimism, laughter or fun in our schools. Yet it isn’t afraid to challenge us, to be gritty, to urge us to be bolder in what we value and how we teach. At a time when there’s too much dashing after quick-fixes in schools, the authors of There is Another Way take us back to first principles about learning, the nature of schools and why many of us decided to become teachers in the first place. It’s a terrific and feisty read, an indispensable inoculation against the educational gloom that can too easily infect us.

Geoff Barton, Head Teacher, King Edward VI School

My belief that ‘there is another way’ is the reason I get out of bed in the morning. The fact that so many others have captured all the feelings I have in my heart about education gives me the courage to be brave and clearer in my own mind about providing the right balance between knowledge, skills, values and behaviours. When I finished the book, I realised this was the start of the process, not the end. I want to do something, no matter how small, to make a commitment to change, to make a difference.

David Hanson, Chief Executive, IAPS

To Sue and Paul

For starting something – thank you

All proceeds from this book go to our work supporting educational endeavours across the Global Educational Village.

Contents

There is Another Way

List of Contributors

Introduction

1. If You Want To Teach Children To Think: Politics, Hegemony and Holidays In the Dordogne

Ian Gilbert

2. When Kids REVOLT: Creating the Right Conditions For Powerful Learning

Mark Creasy

3. School Libraries and Librarians: Why They Are More Necessary Now Than Ever

Sarah Pavey

4. The Learning Line: What Goes Up Will Go Down First

Roy Leighton

5. Live Your Life: And 19 Other Things I Wish I’d Known When I Started Teaching

Rachel Jones

6. How To Paint a Better School: Why School Improvement Is Not a Numbers Game

Dave Harris

7. Educational Research: The Eternal Search

Dr Phil Wood

8. Because It’s In the Exam: Why We Need To Teach Beyond the Test

Lisa Jane Ashes

9. The Values Seesaw: Or How To Balance Your Own View of What’s Right With the Demands of the System and the Pressures Placed On Us From ‘Above’

Dave Whitaker

10. Rules For Mavericks: When Teachers Are Caught Thinking For Themselves

Phil Beadle

11. Knowing Your Students Beyond the Data: On Values, Valuing and Saying Hello

Crista Hazell

12. Grow Your Own Cabinet of Curiosities: An Inventory of Exhibits To Get You Started On the Road To Wonder

Dr Matthew McFall

13. Complex Doesn’t Have To Be Complicated: How To Cope With Complexity Without Becoming a Simpleton

Dr Debra Kidd

14. Planting Seeds of Aspiration In Schools: The Power Teachers Have To Change Lives

Jim Roberson

15. There Isn’t an App For That: Jazz, Flow and Thirsty Learners

Mark Anderson

16. Athena Versus the Machine: Values Led Leadership In a Time of Change

Martin Robinson

17. A Genuine Student Voice Is One That Is Heard: How Powerful Things Happen When Young People Speak Out

Gill Kelly

18. I See No Ships: Visibility and Invisibility In Educational Research

David Cameron

19. Tell It Through Story: A Giant Curriculum

Trisha Lee

20. Tiny Worlds: Dung Beetles, Cosmic Drama and the Educational Imperative

Professor Paul Clarke

21. There Isn’t a Plaster For That! Emotional Health Is a Whole School Issue, So What Can You Do?

Nina Jackson

22. From Attention To Obsession: The Stuff, Strategies and Soul of Teaching and Learning

Hywel Roberts

23. Is the Education System In This Country F#%ked? Education, Inequality and Economic Fodder

Tait Coles

24. If You Change the Way You Look At Things, the Things You Look At Will Change: Taking a Restorative Approach Across School Communities

Mark Finnis

25. If Coaching Is the Answer – What Is the Question? How Professional Development Is All In the Mind

Jackie Beere OBE

26. The Future Classroom Today: The Five Pillars of Digital Learning

Simon Pridham

27. The Monkey’s Nuts: Creating a Challenging Curriculum

Jonathan Lear

28. Now Can You See What I’m Thinking? Schools, Behaviour and Art Therapy

Bethan Stracy-Burbridge

29. The Aesthetic Moment: When What We Learn and How We Feel Turn Out To Be the Same Thing

Martin Illingworth

There is Another Way

1. Insist that your children look ‘beneath the surface’ and are given the space, encouragement and skills to think for themselves.

2. Take a fresh look at how you organise your curriculum and trust children to respond well when you really stretch them with genuinely authentic learning.

3. See your library as so much more than a room full of books and engage your librarian as an ‘information professional’ right at the heart of what schools are about.

4. Understand – and help your children understand – that learning is never a straight line and that getting it wrong is an integral step along the way to getting it right.

5. Remember to value children more than data, that children value people more than worksheets, that the best teachers are learners too and that your job is a part of your life, not the other way round.

6. Remember that your school – and its community – are unique. Simply repeating a formula used elsewhere denies all involved the chance to create something special.

7. Engage in educational research to best understand the power of educational research. But know its limitations too.

8. Look for links between subject areas that will bring the curriculum to life and make it a purposeful experience for all learners and not just ‘because it’s in the exam’.

9. Look beyond their behaviour to the circumstances behind their behaviour and ensure you don’t simply rely on simplistic ‘sanction and reward’ approaches.

10. Challenge everything – superiors, job titles, systems, everything that you feel is getting in the way of all children achieving what they are truly capable of.

11. Value every child in your class relentlessly and regardlessly in both word and deed and remember the extent to which little things can make a lasting difference.

12. Understand the power of wonder to help engage young people and motivate them to learn, then build in opportunities to discover wondrous things across the school.

13. Keep a watchful eye out for the unintended consequences of school improvement measures and always remember that schools are endlessly complex systems.

14. Look beyond what that young person is now to what they could become, with your help, and remember that your influence will reach further than you will ever know.

15. Use technology in learning to enhance great pedagogy not replace it. The skill, for you and them, is to start where you are comfortable, then reach just beyond that.

16. Think carefully about the nature of ‘progress’ in your school and be aware of what you are losing as well as what you are gaining. Especially when it comes to values.

17. Encourage young people to stand for something, to connect with their community and then to act on what needs changing. And support them all the way.

18. Never confuse research with politics and always entertain new ideas without losing sight of your values, your experience and your common sense – then act accordingly.

19. Use story to tap into children’s imagination, to engage them, to help them remember what you’ve taught and as a starting point for many aspects of the curriculum.

20. Grasp the fact that the world we are educating our children in and for is unsustainable. Take your class outside and reconnect education with something bigger.

21. Mental illness is abundantly evident in – and often provoked by – life in school. Learn about it, know what to do about it and then do what is needed, every time.

22. Plan lessons for your children, in your classroom, in your school, in your community and that are ‘worth behaving for’. Use their engagement to reflect on your efficacy.

23. Be aware whose interests are served by the curriculum you teach and the systems of control you employ. Knowledge may well be power but genuine education is about freedom.

24. Focus on relationships more than you focus on behaviour. Focus on values more than you focus on control. Look at your behaviour as much as you look at theirs.

25. Develop your practice in various ways and on an ongoing basis using the many tools available to you these days, with coaching right at the heart of the process.

26. Use technology to make your school credible and their learning relevant but integrate it with your development plan and the needs of the wider community.

27. Make things harder for children, not easier, by using curiosity and novelty as powerful tools to engage young people in their own learning.

28. Seek to combine the curriculum with the reality of their own lives and then plan lessons where moments occur which you cannot plan for.

29. Understand how a young person’s actions can be the outer representation of their feelings and the power you have, as a caring adult, to influence both for the better.

Tell us what you think – [email protected]

www.independentthinking.com

List of Contributors

Mark Anderson is the man people turn to as the ‘ICT Evangelist’ to answer all their ICT queries. However, the secret to making digital learning work lies with what is going on in students’ heads, not the hardware in their hands. Mark’s work shows how we need to create learning environments where we get that right first.

Lisa Jane Ashes is a teacher, trainer, award-winning blogger and the creator of the Manglish concept that links maths and English and develops them together across the curriculum. She sees many flaws in the way schools are organised and has shown that when you break that model you can help them work better.

Phil Beadle is an award-winning teacher, author and columnist with multiple television appearances to his name. He is living proof that sometimes you get the best results for young people by ripping up the rule book and going your own way. The trouble that acting like this gets you into is just something you have to deal with.

Jackie Beere OBE is a vastly experienced school leader, teacher, trainer, coach, writer and editor who has worked at every level from classroom assistant to head teacher and beyond. Drawing on her experience with mindsets, neuro-linguistic programming, skills-based learning and more, she knows how to get the best out of all members of a school community.

David Cameron (known as The Real David Cameron) is an adviser and speaker as well as what can be described as a very active educational activist. He is passionate about education being at the heart of the community and equally passionate that such an education should, in turn, have creativity – and all that this entails – at its heart.

Professor Paul Clarke is a highly regarded and published educator whose experience has seen him advise governments on both educational and ecological matters worldwide. Through his work across the globe, he sees the challenges we are facing and the crucial role education should and must play in helping us to survive.

Tait Coles is the man behind Punk Learning: Never Mind the Inspectors. A teacher and SLT member in the north of England, he sees at first hand the way in which the current system disenfranchises large numbers of young people, and how this will come back and haunt us all. He is on a mission to do something about it.

Mark Creasy has worked in all sectors and across all phases of the education system and refuses to accept that lessons have to look like they normally do. His first book, Unhomework, examined the broken model of traditional homework and turned it on its head.

Mark Finnis is in demand in organisations nationwide for his powerful work on restorative approaches. For schools, this means that discipline is not something imposed on children, enforced by adults. Instead, the whole area of behaviour is a collaborative, constructed and formative process where everyone can win.

Ian Gilbert is an award-winning author, editor, speaker and innovator and the man who set up Independent Thinking over 20 years ago. In recent years he has become increasingly vexed by the way the education system not only fails to make the world better but actually serves to keep it screwed up.

Dave Harris is a school leader and trainer and the author of Brave Heads. His many years leading schools in challenging circumstances have proven to him how important it is for a school leader to think for himself or herself, to work with the whole community and to see a picture well beyond next year’s exam results.

Crista Hazell is a teacher of young people first and foremost, and of modern foreign languages second to that. At a time when education has become a numbers game and ‘student engagement’ a soft option after behavioural sanctions and systems, Crista shows that relentless optimism in young people pays huge dividends.

Martin Illingworth is a university-based teacher trainer, writer, speaker and experienced educator who sees at close up the hypocrisy and folly of so much of what teachers are currently being asked to do. For him, education is not so much a system but a series of moments that last long after the test results have been forgotten.

Nina Jackson has seen first hand the dangers of focusing on academic achievement at the expense of well-being and emotional health. Mental health problems are on the increase in schools – among staff as well as children – and this is an issue we must confront not only as institutions but also as caring individuals.

Rachel Jones is a highly creative teacher with experience across various sectors and phases of the education system. Wisdom comes from experience and experience comes from being brave, trying new things, keeping your eyes open and not doing everything they tell you to.

Gill Kelly is a school leader, speaker and writer who has experienced the complexities of inner-city educational leadership. She knows that genuine education happens when we lift our sights above the paperwork and target chasing and give students a real voice about things that actually matter.

Dr Debra Kidd is a teacher, lecturer, speaker and writer working across all phases of the education system. She draws on her experience in the UK and abroad to be a vocal and persistent thorn in the side of the advocates of a more ‘traditional’ approach to teaching, one that fails to see the child in the room.

Jonathan Lear is primary school deputy head, writer, speaker and incredible teacher who brings the learning alive for children from challenging inner-city backgrounds. Teaching children facts doesn’t make them learners which is why his classroom is a place of discovery, excitement, curiosity and fantasy. And learning.

Trisha Lee is a teacher and writer with her roots very much in theatre. Learning for her is an active, engaging, child-centred process that is stimulated by fantasy and works best, even for traditional subjects such as maths and science, when the teacher is guided by the wonderful fantasies children construct – when we let them.

Roy Leighton is a trainer, speaker, writer and coach with experience both across schools and in the business world. His work shows that learning is not something measured in boxes and straight lines but is a richly complex process done by children, not to them. It is all the more magical because of it.

Dr Matthew McFall is the world’s first school-based ‘Agent of Wonder’ whose (most recent) doctoral thesis explored the powerful role of curiosity and wonder in the learning process. He is the author of A Cabinet of Curiosities and is in demand as schools begin to understand that, where threats fail, curiosity can prevail.

Sarah Pavey is a school librarian who is gaining a national reputation for showing schools that a library is a whole lot more than a room full of books. In fact, it might not even be a room at all. The Information Age desperately needs expert guides and modern librarians can do this better than anyone.

Simon Pridham is an award-winning school leader, trainer and writer who shows that learning technologies can transform the lives of some of our most needy young people – but only when done in an inclusive, community-minded way that balances the right technology with the right curriculum and the right pedagogy.

Jim Roberson is the self-styled ‘Discipline Coach’ and author of the book of the same name. A former professional American football player, Jim draws on his experience in sport, of growing up in the US and of teaching and working with challenging young people in the UK to show how we are more than just teachers, if we let ourselves be.

Hywel Roberts is the man behind the best-selling book Oops! He knows full well that you get the most out of young people – and their teachers – not by coercion but by hooking them in with engaging, stimulating and absorbing learning opportunities during which they behave, join in, cooperate and learn, despite themselves.

Martin Robinson is a teacher, speaker and writer whose first book, Trivium 21c, has won plaudits from across the educational landscape. Martin argues with eloquence and intelligence that school reform – and educational reform as a whole – needs to consider lessons from the past before any more damage is done.

Bethan Stracy-Burbridge is a leading art therapist and trainer. Her work shows that you cannot successfully educate children unless you are successfully addressing the issues they carry with them, issues whose origins may well be outside of school but that impact on their schooling in serious and significant ways.

Dave Whitaker is a head teacher of an emotional and behavioural difficulties special school, who also oversees a number of pupil referral units and other interventions to help young people. Rather than employing a deficit model, Dave shows that you get the best out of troubled young people by treating them with care, respect and unconditional positive regard.

Dr Phil Wood is an experienced university-based academic, trainer, researcher and writer. He has the intelligence, understanding and wisdom to see through the rhetoric and help teachers stay focused on the real challenges and complexities involved in educating young people – and themselves.

As the indomitable Margaret Thatcher once remarked about neoliberal globalisation, ‘There is no alternative’ … Was she right?

Not at all.

James H. Mittelman,Whither Globalization? The Vortex of Knowledge and Ideology (2004)

An equitable approach to pedagogy demands an education system concerned with the development of human capabilities and knowledges of the broadest kind, not one driven by the goal of global economic competitiveness. It requires a system architecture designed to promote learning for all, not one designed to regulate achievement of narrow educational goals and to produce a functioning market for educational providers.

Ruth Lupton and Amelia Hempel-Jorgensen, ‘The Importance of Teaching: Pedagogical Constraints and Possibilities in Working-Class Schools’ (2012)

Lee: I always thought it was a mistake at school that you had a lesson called ‘History’ but not ‘Future’.

Lucy: Maybe because at your school the teachers felt you didn’t have a future.

Not Going Out, Series 6, Episode 6

Introduction

In 1993 Ian Gilbert set up Independent Thinking to ‘change young people’s lives by changing the way they think – and so to change the world’.

Since then, joined by some of the UK’s leading educational thinkers and innovative practitioners, Independent Thinking has worked in thousands of schools with hundreds of thousands of young people, teachers, leaders, parents and others across the UK and around the world.

Our message has always been one of hope, liberation and respect, putting children at the centre of the educational process with learning something they do, not that is done to them. And, more important than the outcome, it is the process that children go through – and grow through – that is the mark of a great education.

Over two decades, we have seen the educational pendulum swing back and forth but we, like so many great teachers, have striven to remain true to our principles. We exist to make a difference not to make a profit. We work like a family. We do what we can to help anyone who asks. We play nicely. We have a laugh while we’re doing it because, as we have said repeatedly, education is too important to be taken seriously.